AI Giants Accused of Secret Pact to Slow Down Development
A new lawsuit claims that four leading AI companies - Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google - made an illegal agreement to slow down their respective AI development. The lawsuit argues that this coordination violates antitrust laws and reduces the value consumers get for paid AI subscriptions.
The alleged agreement took place on September 12, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay urging industrywide cooperation on decelerating advancements in favor of enhanced safety measures. OpenAI's Sam Altman, SpaceXAI's Elon Musk, and Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis each publicly responded to Amodei's proposals in agreement.
The plaintiffs argue that this agreement has an anticompetitive effect on consumers. Lawyers representing the four named plaintiffs, who pay for subscriptions to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, or Gemini, are bringing the suit on behalf of a proposed nationwide class of other paid subscribers to those services.